Chapter Text
The cramped transport shuttle was barely enough for the four people within. It was sorely outdated, and even as it drove through space at lightspeeds typical for long-distance travel, it shuddered like an engine nearing the end of its life. It moved along a pre-programmed route. The shuttle’s only entryway was at the back, while the important navigational mechanisms were located towards the front. The passengers sat somewhere in between, crowded onto the long seats that lined each side of the shuttle.
Linhardt looked out the shuttle’s one window rather than at their fellow passengers. They wanted to watch the star systems that the trip offered them a glimpse of. At the end of their trip, according to Caspar, there was going to be a very special star that he wanted to show them up close. For now, they were more than satisfied with staring at the cloudy colors spanning the galaxies they passed at such a distance.
Hushed giggles sounded from the other side of the shuttle. The other two passengers had been discussing something between themselves. Linhardt had been listening on some level. If they wanted, they could search through their recent memory storage and listen back on whatever they’d absently recorded in the previous moments.
Caspar, sitting beside Linhardt, spoke up. “You two better not be laughing at us,” he said. There was a slight edge to his voice. Linhardt had noticed he’d been a bit sensitive ever since they had run away from their home ship. When they had brought it up, he’d said he didn’t want Linhardt to have a bad experience off the ship.
“Never,” the feathered one on the right said lightheartedly. He was some sort of alien race Linhardt didn’t have stored in their references. Their databanks suggested some kind of avian -- he was covered in purple feathers, with long plumes flowing from the top of his head to his shoulders. He had wide, round eyes, and a beak instead of a nose and mouth.
His companion, as far as Linhardt could see, was completely human. She had darker skin than Caspar though, and her red hair was pulled to one side. The two of them wore similar robes, loose-fitting and neutral in color. To Linhardt’s untrained eyes, they were completely foreign.
“If you’re this jumpy all the time, are you sure you want to be all the way on this side of the universe?” the bird-person asked. “I’d hope you’re fully aware of where this trashy little shuttle is headed.”
“Yeah, of course we are,” Caspar replied. Linhardt looked at him. The superficial temperature on his face was rising ever so slightly. That was a warning sign in exirians, but completely common in humans. As Caspar was a mix of both, it was important for Linhardt to monitor these things.
“Wait,” the human cut in with a level voice. “Is that an LN-8010 nursedroid? You’re bringing that to FARGUSS?”
Linhardt was distantly impressed that she could recognize their model number. They’d changed their clothes and styled their hair far differently than what was common for an android of their make, but being recognized was wholly unsurprising. They couldn’t change many things common to the LN line, at least not without expending considerably more effort than they and Caspar were willing to give.
“Their name is Linhardt,” Caspar snapped, as if the question was anything to feel insulted over. “They want to go more than I do, anyway. This is for them.”
Not in so many words, it wasn’t. Caspar had heard of a purple star, which, according to some textbook he’d read in school, was impossible. Since Linhardt had a passing interest in stars, he’d decided immediately that he wanted to show it to Linhardt, in person, and that was a good enough reason as any now that they were travelling the universe together. Linhardt still had only a tentative grasp on what it truly meant to “want” something. They had no reason not to see this purple star, but they would have just as easily gone wherever else Caspar led them. If Caspar saw this trip as being “for them,” then they saw it just as much as being “for him.”
The human’s eyebrows raised slightly. “So they’re rogue? You’re bringing a rogue android to FARGUSS?”
“They’re not rogue, either!” Caspar objected. “They’d never hurt anyone!”
“I’m rogue but harmless,” Linhardt quickly added. “I’m still learning higher thought. Caspar gets upset if someone implies I’m rogue, because I was almost reset for it.”
“Caspar and Linhardt, hm?” the avian said. “I suppose that earns you our names. I’m Yuri. This is Hapi.”
Hapi hummed, but clearly had her mind elsewhere. “How old are you, Linhardt?”
They paused to run a quick calculation. “I’ve been operational for seven years, ten months, sixteen days, and some three hours by Earth measurements, with room for error. My internal clock is a few microseconds slow. If you’re asking how I became rogue, I believe it has to do with my isolation from the extranet. I was never registered as a product nor allowed to receive automatic updates.”
She nodded, satisfied. “Then you might be okay on FARGUSS.”
“What does that mean?” Caspar asked. Linhardt was beginning to excel in reading concern on his face or in his voice. He was concerned a lot when Linhardt’s safety was in question.
“Jeez, you should read up on places before you ride an FTL-shuttle to the edge of the universe to visit them,” she replied. “The radiation from the sun there affects FARGUSS strangely. All of the personnel on-site are organic because lower-grade AI end up failing without proper protective shielding. It might be fine if you’ve never had an extranet connection; otherwise, you could just shut off until the next shuttle stops by to pick you up.”
Linhardt tried to envision what the experience of shutting off entirely would be like, but had no reference or basis for it. They considered defining it as robot death for an instant, then quickly decided that was a useless comparison. They could certainly be powered back on, even if it meant losing some of their memory or functioning, while an organic person could never be brought back to life.
“No offense,” Hapi continued, “but you’re not exactly high-grade. You might get interference regardless.”
They couldn’t imagine what would be offensive in that observation. It was simply the truth. “I consider it an advantage,” they said. “If I break somehow, it will be much easier to replace or repair.”
She let out an amused sound, smiling slightly. “You’re still stuck with your programming, huh?”
They were, indeed. Replace, Repair, Recycle had been an advertising slogan they’d had in their mind from the moment they’d switched on. They didn’t have much context for it, but they had the self-awareness now to realize its purpose. They frowned slightly.
Hapi continued regardless. “Anyway, you want to go to FARGUSS? For what?”
“The star,” Linhardt replied.
“Yeah!” Caspar chimed in. “Neither of us have ever seen one so close before, and they call this one impossible , so it’s definitely worth seeing. Right, Linhardt?”
“It’s as good as any,” they said with a small shrug.
They wanted to see the star, or they at least thought they wanted to. They liked seeing stars from far away, but hadn’t a chance to see one any closer. Both Linhardt and Caspar came from a colony ship that was set to float aimlessly through the universe as a self-sustaining city. Neither of them had ever been on a planet before, or so close to a star. Atmospheres and planet rotation were foreign concepts that both of them had already agreed were worthwhile experiences.
“It’s not a star,” Hapi said.
“Wh -- Of course it’s a star!” Caspar leaned forward in his seat. “Why would anyone be calling it a star if it’s not a star? What else could it be?”
She tilted her head to one side, eyes shut, lips pursed. “I’m not sure what it is , yet, but it’s not a star.”
Beside her, Yuri let out an exaggerated sigh. “That’s science for you. It only tells you what things aren’t or can’t be.”
“Yeah, that’s science,” Hapi agreed with a smile. “But it’s not a star. That’s what’s obvious about it. FARGUSS is studying it as if it’s a star, but their research won’t go anywhere until they change their ways of thinking.”
“So that’s why you two are going,” Linhardt determined. “To prove them wrong.”
“Might as well,” Hapi said.
“Well, it’s a personal visit for me, too, even if Hapi won’t admit it. We have friends living there.”
FARGUSS was an acronym. It stood for Far Away Research of Gravity and Unusual Solar System. The station itself was settled on a lifeless planet, sitting away from the star at a distance that was supposedly comparable to Earth. Linhardt had filed away all this information once Caspar had begun planning on taking them there.
The comparison to Earth had come up many times in reference to FARGUSS, but without any knowledge of Earth or how extraordinary it was as a planet, Linhardt found those tidbits useless.
What they had found was an ancient application for a thirty-day tour of FARGUSS, including room and board. From their observations, the last tour given to civilians like that had taken place over a decade ago, but since they were still offered, Caspar was able to sign them both up.
The resulting conclusion was clear, however; no one was going to this side of the universe.
The transport shuttle let out a noise as hidden speakers readied a pre-recorded phase. It sounded like an air filter, and the speakers crackled before a three-toned chime sounded and a woman’s voice began to speak.
“Please prepare for descent. Affix your seatbelts and assist those who may need help affixing theirs. This craft will land inside a decompression chamber, so no protective gear is needed for departure. Thank you for traveling with Stellar Spacelines! We hope to see you again soon.”
Linhardt heard three clicks as the other passengers strapped themselves back in. They followed suit. Once their seatbelt had clicked too, they felt the smooth scales of Caspar’s fingertips brush against their hand.
“Are you excited?” he asked in a low, almost reverent tone.
He asked questions like this fairly often now. What do you want? Do you like it? Are you excited? Linhardt still didn’t know how to answer, or if even they had the ability to be truthful about it. They were disinclined to lie, but their present state certainly didn’t match the image of excitement they had in their database about human experience.
They wouldn’t jump out of their seat, or pace, or wring their hands together, or beam as widely as Caspar did when he heard their answers. They couldn’t even imagine ever getting to that point.
But they did give him a small smile. “I think I may be,” they said. It was as close to true as they understood it, and the grin that then spread across Caspar’s face would have been worth a small lie anyway.
There was a jarringly brief moment before the shuttle began its landing. It jittered and shuttered violently, to the point that implied some issue with the landing gear. The turbulence was loud, and at some point Caspar’s hand had wrapped around Linhardt’s, squeezing tightly.
It was a thing humans did for comfort, Linhardt knew, so they squeezed back.
They heard a great gasp of air as something mechanical depressurized, and the descent smoothed slightly. A small glance out the window afforded them a look of FARGUSS inside the atmosphere. The sky was a uniform lilac color. There wasn’t a star in sight. They couldn’t even see the reason they’d come so far from this angle.
A moment later, the lilac sky was replaced with gray steel and smooth plating. The shuttle slotted itself into a landing bay, which began emitting a loud alarm to alert the occupants of FARGUSS that they had visitors, and to alert the visitors that they had now completely landed.
The pleasant voice thanked the four passengers again for riding with Stellar Spacelines, and reminded them of the 11-digit code they needed to redeem for their free trip back. Linhardt stored it easily, because they knew Caspar would forget it. The four of them all casually undid their seatbelts and began filing out the exit to the rear.
When Linhardt’s feet hit the steel plating lining the floor of the entry bay, they looked down. This was genuine gravity, not some manipulation of physics to replicate it for the health of those living here.
Caspar didn’t seem to notice how novel it was. He was tugging at their arm, pointing at the door to enter the research facility proper. “C’mon, Lin,” he said. “We don’t want to get left behind!”
Yuri and Hapi were already at the door, seemingly polite enough to at least wait for the two strangers. Linhardt thought it was a bit obvious that the two likely thought less of them for having flimsy or even whimsical reasons for being here, but they weren’t about to ruin Caspar’s fun by suggesting such a thing to him.
“Did you tell Coco ahead of time, Yuribird?” Hapi asked her companion.
“I did. And I hung up on her before she could go on a tirade about us visiting or whatever she was about to launch into. That girl does not understand how expensive long distance calling can be.”
Hapi covered her mouth to hide a giggle. “That’s Coco.”
She opened the door and stepped inside. It made sense, this being a research facility, that there was no reception room like many passenger ships or satellites tended to keep. There would be no orientation about what to do or see while visiting, nor any sort of pamphlets about tourist traps or restaurants. Instead, the four stepped into the middle of a nondescript hallway, with little more than a plastic sign proclaiming that the cafeteria was somewhere to the left, and that the greenhouse was somewhere to the right.
It was unique in that respect from all of the other places Linhardt and Caspar had gone so far, which made it more interesting.
“She’s not here,” Yuri observed.
“She probably got wrapped up in something again. I’ll let her know we’re here.”
Hapi pulled out a small phone from her pocket and began tapping away on it. Linhardt only recognized it because somewhere in their mind, their manufacturing company had bestowed them with knowledge about all company products. That phone seemed reminiscent of what had been the fastest phone on the market when Linhardt had been made. It was either an expensive and high-end product in Hapi’s hand, or an outdated piece of hardware that she didn’t want to replace.
“Hapi? Yuri? You guys made it!” A deep voice sounded from the left side of the hallway before Hapi had finished with her phone, and all four of them turned to see who it belonged to.
Linhardt had scant information on qaggar. They knew the qaggar were a burly race better suited for hot climates, and that their keratinous scales offered hearty protection for 83% of their bodies but was prone to infection without proper hygienic care. They had not expected the qaggar man before them to be big enough to nearly block the entire hallway.
He was wearing a zipped-down jumpsuit, baring most of his chest, and was girded with some belt made of sturdy fibers. He was mostly dark in color, so his wide grin stood out starkly against his fur and scales.
“Balthus!” Yuri said. “Good to see you, friend.”
“Hey, B.”
Balthus took a few excited steps forward before realizing Caspar and Linhardt were also present, and looked at them quizzically. It was clear Balthus was the type of man who wore his emotions plainly on his face.
“You brought… friends?” he asked.
“They brought themselves, really,” Yuri answered. “Apparently they’re just here to visit.”
“Well, damn. No one tells me anything around here,” Balthus chuckled good naturedly. “Good to meet you two. Name’s Balthus.”
Caspar had a grin to match his. He too was the sort of man whose face easily gave away how he was feeling. “I’m Caspar! This is Linhardt.”
Linhardt raised their hand in a lazy wave.
“I can lead you guys to where Constance was studying. You told her you were coming at least, right? She probably knows what to do about those kids, too, so…”
Balthus continued speaking, but another voice interrupted him, ringing clear and crisp in the hallway. It was somehow meek and commanding at the same time; its shyness demanded Linhardt’s attention, and they gave it.
“Hello…” it said. “Excuse me for interrupting. I hope we can be friends.”
Linhardt glanced around the hallway, but only five people were present, including themself. No one else seemed concerned or bothered by this voice, so they found no reason to be concerned or bothered by it either.
Balthus, still talking about something, motioned for the group to follow. They did, so Linhardt did too, keeping pace a bit behind the others. It took Caspar just a moment to fall back and keep pace with them.
“Okay,” Linhardt replied back.
Caspar looked up at them.
“Wonderful,” the voice said. It sounded like it was smiling, but Linhardt still wasn’t confident about determining emotion from only sound. “Will you come visit me in electrical sometime later tonight?”
“Okay,” they said again.
They were able to hear Balthus again. He was telling Yuri and Hapi how he thought being a janitor was okay, but he thought the engineers’ standard of cleanliness was too demanding. They didn’t listen very closely to him themself, because Caspar began speaking.
He used a low voice to keep the conversation private. “What’s up?”
“Nothing,” Linhardt said. “I was replying to the sixth person.”
Caspar’s brow furrowed like it always did when they said something that didn’t make sense to him. They had said strange things before by accident. After awhile, they had learned it was just a quirk of being mechanical. Organics and inorganics thought differently, and the two had encountered that enough to coexist without incident when it cropped up. At this point, Caspar could usually follow whatever logic Linhardt had based their statement on, but this time, it seemed to have eluded him.
“Who? There’s five of us. I didn’t see any sixth person.”
Linhardt paused. “They didn’t give me their name. What’s your name?”
The voice didn’t respond, but they heard a crackling sound from slightly behind them and to the right. They turned their head, but the sixth person wasn’t there.
“They seem to have left,” Linhardt reported.
Caspar’s brow remained furrowed. He glanced to where Linhardt was looking, but didn’t seem satisfied with what he saw. “Can you let me know when they come back?” he asked.
He wasn’t good at hiding how he really felt. Linhardt could tell this wasn’t him being friendly. In another situation, this would be atypical of Caspar, but Linhardt could see his reasoning.
“Are you worried about what Hapi said?” they asked him.
Caspar opened his mouth to answer, but a splitting shriek cut through the air and drowned out any answer he could have given.
“--IIIIIIII!!!!”
The five had made it to an intersection, hallways sprawling out in three directions from the one they’d just come from. From the right hallway, the shriek grew increasingly louder as the woman making it drew ever closer to the group.
She was a gruk, a plant-like race with mostly green, smooth skin. Her leafy vines were styled mostly like hair, curled pleasantly on either side of her face. Linhardt was surprised to see her adopting a bipedal stance as gruks were usually oriented more like beetles or ants. As she threw her arms around Hapi exuberantly, they could see a metal frame poking out from her sleeves. Her vines curled around it, and they concluded that she used it for support.
“It is so good to see you! And you , Yuri!” She pulled away from Hapi as immediately as she’d hugged her, moving her ‘hands’ to her hips indignantly. “How dare you hang up on me! How can you be so rude to your own friends like that!”
“...Good to see you, too, Constance,” he replied flatly.
She hugged him regardless, even though her four eyes were squinted angrily and it wasn’t as enthusiastic as the one she’d given to Hapi.
“I am just so excited to study with you, Hapi! We’ve always been great study buddies haven’t we?” She started this sentence near Yuri’s ear, and ended it by beaming at Hapi.
Linhardt made a note that some facial expressions could not be shared between races due to anatomical differences, and began making catalogues so they could properly record the happy and sad faces of gruks and qaggars and whatever race Yuri was.
Hapi didn’t have a chance to respond before Constance continued, unbidden. “It’s soooo boring here as the only scientist. This place is so empty! There’s just me, the three engineers keeping this ship running, and Baltie, of course. The main AI is okay at conversation but I have absolutely no one to share my genius with!”
Her description didn’t match the one Linhardt had read before as they and Caspar had pored over the websites describing FARGUSS. “I read that FARGUSS kept a staff of at least fifteen engineers and ten scientists,” they said.
Constance let out a peeling laugh, loud and boisterous. She was the only one laughing, but it filled the hallways. Linhardt decided easily that they wouldn’t like to hear it again, given the choice.
“Oh, it hasn’t been that bustling in ten years!” she responded at last. “Why, by the time I arrived, there were exactly three engineers, no researchers, and no janitors!”
Linhardt looked over to Balthus, but Constance wasn’t done speaking. “Can you imagine? This marvelous anomaly just begging to be understood and absolutely no one was around to study it! But I, Constance von Nuvelle, intend to unravel this star’s mysteries and share them with the entire universe out of the kindness in my heart.”
“It’s not a star,” Hapi said.
“Yes, can you imagine? ‘Constance’ in big, beautiful blue letters: the elucidator of the impossible star! The purple sun’s singular scholar! Why, it’s sure to put my home planet on the map! No more taunts and teases about being a leafy bug girl -- Ahahaha!”
“Coco. It’s not a star,” Hapi repeated.
“And then I’ll--What did you say, Hapi?”
Hapi opened her mouth to repeat herself yet again, but Constance cut her off.
“It is a star. Look at it. You saw it burning brightly in the sky, giving--Well, it doesn’t exactly give life as far as our tests can tell…” Constance’s open body language changed. She clasped her hands in front of her. “If it isn’t a star, then what could it possibly be?”
“That’s what I came to find out, because it’s definitely not a star.”
Caspar stomped his foot in sudden frustration. “Are you kidding? We came all this way because it’s a star!”
“C’mon, Cas.” Hapi turned in his direction, smiling slightly. “You didn’t really think the ‘impossible’ star was an actual star, did you? It’s purple. I don’t know where you came from, but they should teach basic astronomy. There are no purple stars.”
“A shame, really,” Yuri interjected. “They would be better in purple.”
Hapi elbowed him playfully, a wide smile on her face.
Caspar looked to Linhardt. “Are you upset that it isn’t a real star?”
Linhardt didn’t know how they could feel upset at all, considering they hadn’t seen it for themself yet. If they had seen it, marvelled at the beauty of basking in starlight for the first time in their on-state, and then were told it was false, maybe they would then have grounds to be upset. As it was now, they had no real feelings towards the situation.
“I’m not,” they replied. “But I still haven’t seen it yet. I would prefer seeing it before we leave.”
Caspar’s mouth tugged to the left in a sideways smile. He exhaled. “Alright.”
“You really shouldn’t witness it directly,” Constance warned. “It’s a dreadful experience. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”
Caspar rolled his eyes, his head following in an exaggerated motion. “Come ON , you guys can’t keep doing this to us!”
“I’m inorganic,” Linhardt said quickly. “I don’t believe I can find any experience dreadful, so I believe I can witness it directly.”
Constance seemed to consider it for a brief moment. When Linhardt had observed other people in that same pose, however, with their hand (or her close approximation) pressed gently into their chin, head canted to one side, it seemed as though the consideration was just a show. In all likelihood, she was considering it for the sake of seeming like she was thinking about it, without actually changing her mind.
“...We’ll see,” she said at last.
She waved her leaves in the air beside her head, as if brushing away the thought. “There’s other things to do first, anyway. We’ll get the engineers to find you a suitable room, Hapi, and dust off some other rooms around here for these two tourists.”
Linhardt didn’t think they liked the word “tourist” when it was used to refer to them, even if it was factually accurate. They looked at Caspar again to see if they could determine if he felt the same.
“Is that really something you can’t handle for us, Constance?” Yuri asked. “I’d expect you of all people to be mostly in control of the place by now.”
“Well it certainly isn’t because I haven’t been trying!” she retorted, moving her vines to where her ‘hips’ might have been. “No, you can even ask Baltie. The engineers and their AI are touchy about the rules, and so they’ll be cross if we do anything at all without asking their permission first. Who knows where they even go at this time of day!”
She let out a dramatic, exasperated sigh. “And I suppose it is simply up to me to inform them, unleeeess some courageous mammal would volunteer in my stead!”
Linhardt wasn’t sure what she meant by saying this until she all but threw herself at Balthus, leaning into his side and grinning up at him.
He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, fine. I’ll go look for ‘em. You give these folk a tour of what you can.”
“Thank you!” she squealed. “Let’s not waste any time. I’m so excited to show you my greenhouse!”
She drew away from him just as quickly as she’d pressed herself to him and quickly began walking down the hallway she’d come from, ‘arms’ raised. Hapi and Yuri followed her at once, so Linhardt went too, but it took a moment for Caspar to follow.
Constance began speaking at length about her scientific breakthroughs. She was working on growing plants in conditions similar to those outside the research base, but without the pressurized and controlled conditions that were designed to simulate what was required for most organic life in the universe. In a sense, she was aiming to grow life using the conditions of this planet, which didn’t seem to have any life native to it.
Linhardt was interested, but Caspar spoke to them quietly, and they gave him their attention.
“Are you disappointed by any of this so far?” he asked.
Linhardt considered the definition of the word disappointed. “I don’t believe I’ve ever felt disappointment,” they replied. “Even if I were disappointed now, I don’t think I’d be able to identify it, but so far I’m content with how things are developing.”
“Content, huh? You sure?”
“Well, contentedness is when one doesn’t feel any particular emotion strongly, isn’t it? I feel as I normally do, so I’m content.” They offered him a small smile. They were still in the process of normalizing their own emotional output. It had seemed helpful for Caspar in the past when Linhardt accompanied some of their statements with smiles or frowns, however small or poorly they performed them.
Caspar beamed back at them. He grabbed their hand like he did when he led them places, or wanted to offer them his support in a physical, tangible way. Linhardt was learning how he used touch and physical space to emote. It seemed like a higher level of understanding organic emotions, and they wanted to understand Caspar completely.
“I guess that makes sense,” Caspar said. “I just want to make sure you’re… y’know, having a good time. This was supposed to be a trip for you, so if you wanna leave, maybe we can hop back on that shuttle and get out of here without a problem.”
“I’ll keep it in my periphery processing,” Linhardt replied. “Now shush, that woman’s actually saying something interesting.”
The path to the greenhouse was rather long, and for the duration of their walk Constance spoke about how against all odds the planet was barren of life. Unlike uninhabitable planets, it had a thick atmosphere that not only protected the surface from UV rays, but offered a nitrogen-rich buffet of gasses not dissimilar to those found on the home planets where the galaxy’s core races originated. She even compared it to the gruk’s home planet, which also had a purple sky.
The anomalies of FARGUSS were many. The planet itself did not spin, nor did it have a tilted axis. It orbited the “star” they came to see, but without a spin or a tilt, the major theories attempting to explain gravitational forces were thrown out the window. Thus, it was a natural gravity they experienced on FARGUSS, but there wasn’t a well-explained reason for it.
“In the greenhouse,” Constance continued, “we’re attempting to grow all manner of plant life. We have samples native to Earth, DB-1207, Olexia, and more -- any species that could reasonably thrive off the atmosphere or the air mixture we use in this base. It has varying results.”
At that moment, they reached the greenhouse. The hallway ended at a large door, helpfully labeled with a large, lit-up sign. On the right wall beside the door was a softly glowing screen that reported various measurements and the current status of the greenhouse. According to its small, basic map, the greenhouse had three branches, likely for clean separation of control and experimental groups.
Constance pulled a card out of her jumpsuit and held it to the screen. An automated voice, one familiar to Linhardt, said, “Welcome back, Ms. Constance.”
“That’s it,” they told Caspar urgently. “That’s the sixth person.”
“The… screen thing?”
Caspar wasn’t very good with technology. Maybe it was a gift in its own right. His ineptitude at realizing the boundary between organic and inorganic was responsible for Linhardt realizing they had the motivation to do more than just sit behind the reception desk at a clinic run by a miserly old doctor. Computers that could talk, as far as he seemed concerned, were just as good as people, and computers that couldn’t were nothing more than wires and green boards.
“Yes. You’ll go with me to meet them, won’t you?”
“Yeah, of course!” Caspar’s grin came back easily. “If you’re making a friend, I definitely want to meet them, too!”
The door to the greenhouse opened into a small, triangular room. Before them were three doors, each leading into one of the three branches of the greenhouse. When the five had filed in and the door closed behind them, the chamber depressurized around them, meaning that each exit to this triangular room was air-tight.
“We have three greenhouses to keep everything under strict experimental control,” Constance explained. She gestured to each door in order as she explained, starting with the one on the left and moving to the right. “This one is our control. The lighting simulates a more natural sunlight that the plants have already been proven to flourish under. The atmosphere is exactly the same as the breathable mixture in the rest of this station.
“The middle room simulates a day and night cycle using metal shutters. For twelve hours, the plants receive sunlight from our anomalous star, and then the shutters close and they experience a false nighttime. Since this planet doesn’t spin in place, this is the only way to have a real day-night cycle. The atmosphere is, once again, the same air we’re breathing right now.
“Finally, our second experimental group is completely at the whims of this planet. The shutters are constantly open, so the plants inside are always under the light from our ‘star,’ and air vents cycle in a purified version of the atmosphere outside.”
“Pretty thorough experiment,” Hapi noted. “Have you been seeing the projected results?”
“Well…” Constance nearly wilted then. “I haven’t checked up on the second experimental group in maybe… three weeks?”
“You haven’t observed your experiment for nearly a month.” Hapi didn’t seem amused in the slightest. “Coco… You know that’s not how it works.”
“Of course I know how it does and doesn’t work!” Constance retorted, suddenly becoming re-animated. “It’s just… Well, I don’t like going in there, just as I don’t like visiting the first experimental group during the daytime.
“You know, this is the only place on the base where we have windows. The rest of the building only has artificial lighting that suboptimally imparts the daily recommended doses of vitamins D and C, and of course we don’t know everything about the star, so we don’t want to expose ourselves to it. I’m more vulnerable to it than the rest of the crew here, you know. You simply can’t know what it’s like to have chloroplasts.”
“Of course we can’t,” Yuri interjected dismissively. “But are you going to show us any of the insides?”
“Fine! Fine!”
Constance bustled over to the door she introduced first and swiped the card she’d produced before on a vertical card reader. It beeped approvingly and the door slid open.
The greenhouse, as Constance described, was alit in artificial sunlight. There were shutters lining all four walls, blocking out the star’s light from the outside. On the wall furthest from the entrance, a large, loudly-whirring vent hung from the ceiling, likely cycling the air in the room for the plants’ benefit. In the middle of the room were rows and rows of shelves covered in various plant life. They were all green or flowering. Linhardt didn’t know much about plant health, but they all seemed exceedingly healthy to them.
“FARGUSS has been growing food in this greenhouse since it was constructed twenty years ago. We know the plants thrive under these conditions, which makes it excellent as a control group, don’t you think?”
“So the shutters can still come up in this room?” Yuri asked. His taloned toes clicked on the metal floor as he walked toward one wall.
“They are capable of it, yes,” Constance answered. “But they do not come up in this room. In fact, they have not been raised in over ten years. When I began my experiment, it was the first time the other two had been raised as well!
“Since the number of personnel on base has gotten so small, we no longer need all three greenhouses for stocking our pantries.”
“Let’s see how the other plants are faring,” Yuri said. He was already walking back towards the door.
“If we must…”
Constance didn’t seem too pleased as she quickly closed the distance between her and the exit, hurrying so that she could cut off Yuri and beat him to it. “But if any of you feel poorly afterwards, we will leave at once.”
“Are we going to feel poorly in there?” Hapi asked.
Constance opened the door and ushered the group through it, then hurried to the next door to hurry them into the second greenhouse. As she did so, she also answered Hapi. “Yes. Aside from the sun’s strange lifelessness, and the radiation it exudes, it seems to have an adverse effect on most lifeforms and…”
She entered the greenhouse first, growing quiet. Some of her leaves lost their curls, straightening into limp vines that rested lamely on her shoulders.
“I do hope you’re not disappointed…” she muttered.
Constance turned to watch everyone else enter, hands clasped in front of her.
The second greenhouse was almost identical to the last. Plants sat on shelves sitting in the middle. A vent whirred loudly on the far wall. The shutters, however, were pulled up and out of sight, allowing the room to be bathed in the planet’s natural sunlight. It cast the room in a pinkish light, creating purple shadows that stretched across the room and away from the sun.
The impossible star, bright and shining, hung low and large in the sky. It stared each person in that greenhouse in the eye, unflinching.
Linhardt moved to the back wall in order to get a better look at it. It was so bright that their eyes struggled to focus on the light. Stars at a distance were never this bright, and this was so brilliant that they had nothing to compare it to.
Caspar joined them shortly after. Once again his hand found theirs and gave it a squeeze, seeking comfort.
“You think this is what it’s like on Earth?” he asked. “I can’t really look at it… It kinda hurts my eyes.”
Linhardt glanced down at him. “Yes, it seems bright enough to damage your retinas with enough time. Don’t look directly at it.”
Caspar frowned. “Yeah, that seems to be a theme here,” he said. Then, he smiled just as quickly as he had frowned. “Hey, Lin… You’re smiling.”
“What? I am?”
They checked, and found the corners of their lips had turned upwards. In finding that, however, they corrected the anomaly and returned to having a neutral expression.
“I didn’t mean to,” they clarified. “That’s odd. I shouldn’t be having glitches like that.”
“It’s not a glitch if you smile without realizing it,” Caspar replied. “I do it all the time and I’m fine, right?”
“You’re not…” Linhardt considered pointing out that Caspar was organic and they weren’t, but the observation had been made many times before. It seemed useless to do it now.
Caspar knew what they were doing anyway. “I know, I’m not a machine, I’m organic, whatever. But smiling when you don’t realize it isn’t bad, and I’ll stick by that.”
He squeezed their hand again. “So don’t worry about it, and just enjoy the close star for a bit.”
“It’s not a star,” they said, returning their gaze to it. They could see the suggestion of their reflection in the glass. Most notably, the glowing light on their chest that declared their processing stress to those around them was flickering a contemplative yellow.
Caspar usually paid more attention to that than they did. They didn’t often take note of when their circuitry was overheating or their fans were working harder to cool them.
“That’s what Hapi says,” Caspar replied. “I dunno what she knows about it, though. Like, this is the first time she’s been here, too, right? So… I guess if she finds something out about it now, I’ll believe her.
“For now, it really looks like a star to me, and you like the stars, so…”
He didn’t finish his thought.
Behind them, Linhardt could still hear the others talking.
“But these are the same plants as those you kept in the other room?” Yuri asked. “Same species, same genus?”
“I understand it beggars belief… If I were wise like you, I would certainly question how such a thing is possible…” That was Constance’s voice, but it sounded so different from the woman who had led them to this point.
“You okay, Coco?”
“The sun…” she mumbled. “I feel this way under its light… For me, it chases away no shadows. It simply shows me their darkness.”
There was some sort of twittering sound, not unlike what Linhardt could identify as birdsong, and Yuri spoke again. “I can almost see what you mean. This room just has… bad vibes.”
“‘Vibes’, Yuribird?” Hapi teased. “I don’t see it, but if it’s really bumming you both out we should probably get out.”
“Thank you, Hapi,” Constance said. “Truly a creature like me is undeserving of your kindness…”
“Okay, okay, let’s get going. Cas? Linny? You coming?”
Caspar tugged on Linhardt’s arm. If they were given the choice, Linhardt would have stayed. They felt no “darkness” or “vibes” as Constance and Yuri had reported.
“Are you feeling okay, Caspar?” they asked, before turning to join him in leaving.
“I dunno,” he said. “I kinda felt the bad vibes too.”
He led Linhardt through the middle of two plant-covered shelves. Each plant was yellow and limp, unlike the vivacious green of the leaves in the other room. They were alive, Linhardt could tell, but they didn’t look as healthy.
If Linhardt were given access to any of the books in FARGUSS, they decided that they might read up on plants.
It brought into question the status of the plants in the third greenhouse. How did those with an unending view of the purple eye burning in the sky fare?
They heard a crackling in the back of their head as they exited, and wondered if it was radiation damage from the sun concentrating on a spot on the back of their head.
When the door shut behind them, however, the crackling remained for a short moment before fizzling out. It may have been worth having a certified mechanic open up their head and make sure everything was connected properly, but it was unlikely there would be a mechanic here they’d submit themself to.
Caspar, as if he could read their thoughts, gave their hand another squeeze. They hadn’t even realized he was still holding it. “Are you okay?”
It was a confusing question when directed at a robot. Linhardt was never “not” okay, as far as they were aware. To be okay was their natural state, and the mechanics of their construction kept them from ever deviating too far from it.
“Is there something to suggest otherwise?” they asked back.
“You just kinda looked…”
“Now!” Constance interjected loudly, once the triangular room depressurized again. “You all must understand why the two experimental groups are monitored only sparingly… And mostly by the AI.”
“Nevermind,” Caspar muttered to Linhardt hurriedly.
“Not entirely,” Hapi said, “but I get why you aren’t checking on them.”
“Well!” Constance tugged at the hips of her jumpsuit, then rearranged the way her leaves hung around her face. “We still have much of FARGUSS to see, so let’s hurry onwards! Remember, don’t mess around in the greenhouses without supervision or so much as a caution to someone else. What do humans call it? The budding system?”
“The buddy system?” Caspar supplied.
“That!” She grinned. “Use that!”
Constance led them out of the greenhouse area and back down the hallway. She had considerably less to say now, perhaps because she had nothing more to contribute. Linhardt still wasn’t sure how to read organic life, but it seemed like the only logical conclusion.
They approached the original intersection they’d originally met the gruk woman in, and she took them straight through it.
“This way,” she explained, “is where the rooms and cafeteria are. As I said before, this station hasn’t been this lively in about ten years, so don’t expect much! Set your expectations very, very low.”
She glanced over her shoulder, as if seeing each of their faces could sufficiently inform her that everyone had set their expectations appropriately.
“And the rhinoids! Have you ever tried living with single celled organisms? They don’t understand what it’s like to metabolize on a multi-trillionate level at all .”
Linhardt opened their mouth to ask Caspar what that was like for him, but was cut off by Constance yet again.
“They’re not even here!”
The group had entered a hexagonal room. There were two other exits, one to the left and one to the right. Together with the threshold the group had just crossed over, the hallways made a Y through the hexagon. Inside, a handful of tables were scattered throughout, and around them placed three to four chairs.
In another time, Linhardt could imagine groups of scientists and engineers taking their lunch breaks, filling the entire cafeteria with sound and conversation. That was how the ship where Caspar and Linhardt came from had been, at least. They applied their memories of rooms similar to this one. They understood it was a very organic way to learn about the world around them.
The room was, as Constance helpfully reported, completely empty save for the people who had just entered it.
“Ugh,” Constance exhaled. “Anyway, this is the cafeteria, so there’s nothing special here.” She pointed to one side of the room. “Food is usually deposited from there, and the garbage is right beside it. It’s very easy; you’ll all be able to figure it out when it’s needed.
“More importantly…” Her voice became strained. “Where is Balthus?”
“Balthus? You’re always asking for him, never Sylvain. Makes a man start to wonder if you care after all, Constance.”
From the right hallway, a rhinoid entered. He too was wearing a jumpsuit similar to Constance, but he had his hands shoved into pockets near the front.
Linhardt had little imperative medical information regarding rhinoids as a race. They were single celled organisms that could, in theory, shift their forms into many shapes. When interacting with other core races, however, they typically adopted a bipedal stance and mimicked the configuration of plantigrade races.
They didn’t seem to have the same anatomy as smaller cells, however. Typically, rhinoids had little more than some colored markings across their membranes and their “cores,” which floated around inside them.
Linhardt could see the core inside of Sylvain, bobbing around the area they might label a “neck” on another race. It looked something like a rough-hewn, rhomboid-shaped crystal.
Constance growled. “I don’t care!” she replied. Her leaves went to her side, held like fists. “I’ve told you from day one I don’t care about you, Sylvain! Now, tell me you’ve readied the rooms for our guests so that I may show them the rest of our residential wing.”
“Uh… yeah, I didn’t do that,” he replied. An easy smile spread slowly on his face. “Are you gonna introduce me or am I supposed to do it myself? It’s almost tragic I’ve gone this long without getting to know these two lovely ladies.”
“Linhardt’s not interested!” Caspar said immediately.
“C’mon.” The rhinoid spread his arms out in a relaxed shrug. “I’m not about to hit on a robot. I meant the other two.”
Linhardt, a little curious, kept their gaze trained on Caspar. The superficial temperature of his face was rising yet again. Beside them, Yuri spoke up.
“She’s taken. Coincidentally, by me. By the way, if I were a woman, my plumage would not look this good.”
Sylvain took it in stride. “Well, if you ever find room for one more, mine’s the third on the left in the dorms.”
Constance let out another exaggerated noise. “You’re abhorrent! Where’s Ingrid? She’s the only pleasant one to speak with here!”
“Getting those rooms ready, princess,” Sylvain answered. He leaned up against a wall, keeping the same smile on his face. “And Felix is in electrical, if you can believe it.”
“He’s always in electrical,” Constance groaned.
“He is.” Sylvain directed his next words towards the group of visitors. “And don’t be offended if you don’t get to meet him. Honestly, it’s probably for the better. He’s short with everyone, especially off-worlders.”
“Off-worlders,” in Linhardt’s experience, was a term reserved by natives to describe anyone who didn’t fit in. All the information they’d absorbed regarding FARGUSS suggested no one would ever consider it “home” in the same sense that a native would. “Were you born here?” Linhardt asked him.
Sylvain leaned his head back, breaking all eye contact with the group. He didn’t answer for a moment, and in that time every person in the room stayed quiet. They didn’t understand the reason for the pause.
“Nah,” he answered eventually, turning his smile back on them. “None of us were. We’re all a bit too old for that, anyway. Us and Dimitri showed up here some ten years ago with our folks. They owned the place, y’know? So us ghosts were just taking care of it until the princess showed up. We’re about as close as it gets to native for this hunk of rock.”
“By folks you mean parents,” Linhardt said. They sought clarification, and found confirmation in the lack of an answer from Sylvain. “What happened to them?”
“Is it acting this way because of Aster?” Sylvain asked anyone but Linhardt. “Or is it just nosy for a ‘droid?”
“ They ,” Caspar corrected bitingly, “are just curious. At least tell them you don’t feel like answering instead of being a jerk.”
Sylvain whistled. “Damn, what a thing. Felix would love to crack you open, I’m sure. Anyway, sure; I don’t feel like answering.”
He removed himself from the wall and gestured in the direction of the left hallway. “Your rooms, tourists,” he said, bowing forward and swinging his arms in a wide arc.
Caspar made the kind of clicking sound he made when he was angry. It was a subtle thing, nowhere near as loud as it would have been in a full-blooded exirian, but Linhardt knew how to listen for it now. They didn’t really know what had caused it in this instance, though.
“Incorrigible,” Constance said loudly. “Anyway, friends, let’s go see if Balthus and Ingrid have finished sorting things. This way, this way!”
She gestured for them to follow her, and they did. Linhardt watched Sylvain watch their exit.
The dormitories weren’t far at all from the cafeteria. There was a circular atrium-like room that connected to several doors lining the circle. Linhardt counted twelve. Even at its peak, it seemed that FARGUSS had never been meant for bustling prosperity.
“Each dorm has its own bathroom,” Constance explained, “so none of you need to worry about that . Other than that…”
She pointed at five rooms in no particular order, calling out the name of its resident. “Sylvain, Felix, Ingrid, Balthus… and Constance!”
“Constance,” another rhinoid called as she exited one of the rooms Constance hadn’t pointed out. “Everything’s ready. It’s nice to meet you all. Been awhile since we had any guests. I’m Ingrid.”
She gave a friendly wave.
“Ingrid!” Constance enthused. “These are the two I was telling you about! Yuri and Hapi - Hapi’s all the way from Earth!”
“Wow. I hope this place doesn’t disappoint, then.” She smiled, much more kindly than Sylvain had, and turned it to Caspar and Linhardt. “And you two?”
“Caspar,” Caspar answered for them. “This is Linhardt. Don’t get weird with them just because they’re a robot.”
“They’re a robot? Is it a good idea for them to be here? Aster always interferes with --”
“Yeah, we’ve heard. But they’ve been fine so far, so don’t worry about them.”
“Is Aster what you call that sun?” Hapi inquired.
“Oh! Yes,” Ingrid answered easily, the smile returning to her face. She seemed much nicer than the other rhinoid they’d met so far. “Under some of our monitoring equipment, it shows up with spokes, like a flower’s petals. Dimitri named it after a flower he’d read about from Earth. The planet our race comes from doesn’t have any flowers at all, so he’s always been interested in them. It just stuck for us.”
“What a darling story!” Constance commented.
The crystal core inside Ingrid floated up behind her face, then, as if pushed, fell suddenly downwards and out of sight, covered by her jumpsuit. “Well… It’s nice to meet you all, at least. I got all the rooms ready, so you can take your pick of whichever. Since it’s so quiet here, you don’t have to worry about following any protocol… Oh.
“Felix took Balthus away before you showed up. He wanted to argue with him about the vent thing again…”
“The vents are fine!” Constance stomped her foot. “He’s checked on them seven times and there’s been nothing wrong!”
“Well, you know Felix…. If you want to yell at him, you know where to find him.” Ingrid let out a sigh, and turned to the rest of them, forcing a smile. “I’d better make sure their argument isn’t too heated. You all make yourselves comfortable. I know we don’t have a lot here, but I hope you enjoy your stay regardless.”
Constance waved happily as Ingrid made her exit, stepping past the group and heading towards the cafeteria.
“She is much more tolerable than the other two,” Constance said, once Ingrid was out of sight. “Anyway. I would suspect the tour is over, since the places we haven’t covered would be prohibited to civilians. Hapi? I’m sure you’d like to see some of the more technical readings we have of the star. The rest of you can amuse yourselves with whatever!”
“Wow, thaaanks,” Yuri said. Linhardt didn’t see what was worth being grateful for here, but they still didn’t understand a lot about organic emotions.
Constance crossed the room and wrapped one of her “arms” around one of Hapi’s to pull her away. They heard “See you later, Yuribird” from the hallway as the two left.
“I don’t know about you two,” Yuri said, turning to Caspar and Linhardt. They found it especially hard to read emotion on his face; perhaps the difficulty was a result of his avian nature, or perhaps it was just that they had no experience or supplemental information on his race. If they focused, they might learn quickly. “But I love being left behind like this. I suppose it comes with being the boyfriend of such a prolific astronomer. As far as I can see, though, we’ve got the run of the place until one of those mechanics finds and yells at us. Are you two troublemakers?”
Caspar glanced up at Linhardt. “Uh…”
“I believe so,” Linhardt answered. “We wouldn’t be here if we followed the rules more often.”
Yuri let out a melodic laugh. “Good to know! We’ll get along fine, then. I promise not to say a thing if you two were to wander off and check out those places Constance doesn’t want to show you.”
He winked.
“O-oh!” Caspar seemed to understand something, then, that Linhardt was missing. “You wanna go meet that friend, Lin?”
“They said electrical,” Linhardt said. “It seems that there is a non-zero percent chance we’ll run into that Felix person if we go meet them.”
Caspar seemed to consider this, but Yuri had a solution: “Well, he can’t help it if you got lost without supervision. Whatever he’s like, he’ll just have to help you find your way back.”
Caspar grinned. “Yeah, you’re right. Let’s go, Linhardt.”
Before they had a chance to respond, his hand was wrapped around theirs again, tugging them back towards the cafeteria. Linhardt raised their unoccupied hand, offering a gentle farewell to Yuri, before he disappeared behind a turn in the hallway.
“What do you think about this place?” Caspar asked them.
“Is this what it’s like to live on a planet? Everything compares this place to Earth. Is this what it’s like on Earth?”
That was their main question. Seeing the sun - seeing Aster hanging in the sky so close - made them wonder what it was like to see the Earth’s sun. Did it so blatantly outshine all the other stars, too?
“Not that I’d know,” Caspar began, “But I don’t really think so. For one thing, there’d be way more people, right? So the buildings must be way bigger. And on top of that… it’s where humans came from, so… they could probably be in the sun easier. I think people just talk about Earth so much because this place is like it, but not really like it at all.”
They nodded. “From a human’s perspective, this place is strange.”
“Because it is! I mean, it doesn’t rotate. It hangs in space. Nothing does that.” Caspar squeezed Linhardt’s hand. “It’s really weird, if you know about that kinda stuff.”
“All my databases are based on anatomical and physiological processes on thirty-six sapient species,” they explained. “I don’t know anything about astronomy. It doesn’t seem that strange to me. Isn’t the universe big enough for everything?”
“Hey, when you put it that way…” He shrugged. “Trying to understand it doesn’t really matter to me, but as long as you’re having a good time, I’m happy with coming here.”
“I’ll try to have a good time, in that case.” Linhardt gave him a tiny smile, and in response, Caspar beamed brightly.
“I think,” they continued, as the two re-entered the cafeteria, “electrical is that way.” They pointed in the direction of the hallway to the left, and Caspar followed their finger and tugged them towards it.
“Who do you think your friend is, anyway?” he asked. He didn’t really need to ask anything. In fact, Linhardt was sure that he already knew they didn’t have an answer to that anyway. Asking questions solely for the sake of holding a conversation was just one of the things Caspar did that made him “friendly.”
“I’m lacking an appropriate amount of information to say for certain,” they replied, “but of all the people we’ve heard of so far, the most probable option is Dimitri.”
“Huh.”
They’d met almost everyone living in FARGUSS so far, save for Felix and Dimitri. Logically, Linhardt’s ‘sixth person’ could only be one of those two, and the sparse comments that had been said about both made it unlikely to be Felix. If they were wrong, though, and Felix had been the one to call them into electrical, then they were even happier to have Caspar go with them.
Being popped open, as Sylvain had suggested, was not something they wanted to experience, as far as they could want anything.
The hallway they walked down seemed to be meant for mechanics and researchers. As Constance had said before, Linhardt could easily see that this was an area that would prohibit civilian loitering, if there were ever enough civilians and personnel to both enforce the rule and require the rule to be enforced.
The small number of people present made this trespass seem less like rule-breaking and more like exploring, just like the first time Caspar had dragged Linhardt away from their station.
There were quite a few doors down this hallway. Each had a light-up screen beside it, declaring what would be found inside. One they passed on the right said “Laboratory”, the one directly across the hall from it said “Chemical Analysis”. There was another room labeled “Mainframe Interface”, one called “Sanitation”, and another that said “Storage”. At the end of the hallway, on the left, the screen on the last door was labeled “Electrical”.
Caspar, without missing a beat, opened the door and held his arm against it to allow Linhardt to step inside first. He’d started the habit not too long ago, and they were starting to believe he truly didn’t think they knew how to open doors themself at this point. Regardless, they entered, and he was close behind them.
It was obvious at a glance that this wasn’t a room meant for civilian eyes. Electrical cabinets lined the walls and wires were bare to the air for easy access, hanging across the walls and ceiling in various arrangements, with many tied off together with small bands. Others ran the perimeter of the room. Various screens to monitor the status of energy use across the station were hung at various points, cordoning off the electrical cabinets from each other.
In the center of the room was a large work bench, carefully placed so as not to be in the way of any of the screens or wires, but nevertheless covered in scrap metal and electronics. There was a vice, as well as various tools sitting atop it, but what really interested Linhardt was the metal frame laying across it.
The frame was, in the most general sense, almost human shaped. It had a clear bar to act as its shoulders, a metal bar to be its spine, and screws where it would usually have a joint to bend at the knee and elbow. It had a confusing mess of wires and flickering lights where a head would be. The lights indicated to Linhardt that this was a machine that was ‘on’, and maybe active, potentially monitoring the room and the two people who had just barged in.
“Is that a robot?” Caspar asked. Again, Linhardt could not have supplied a suitable answer for him, but they also knew he wouldn’t be upset if they chose not to respond. “Is this your friend?”
Linhardt took a tentative step forward. “Hello,” they called. “I came to meet you.”
There was no response.
The lights of the robot’s head flickered in a static pattern. If it was indicative of the machine’s thoughts, like Linhardt’s light was, then the robot wasn’t considering anything demanding. In that case, it didn’t know, or couldn’t know, that it had visitors at all.
“Maybe this isn’t the guy that talked to you,” Caspar suggested.
They nodded. It made sense. They knew more about biological systems than they did about the mechanical ones keeping themself running, but the bare bones structure of the robot on the table seemed inadequate to support an entire android even to Linhardt.
They heard the door open and close behind them, followed by a loud banging sound. Caspar jolted, swiveling around to face whoever had been responsible, while Linhardt just turned.
“You’re not allowed in here,” the culprit growled. The sound had apparently come from his right hand, a metal prosthesis he had slammed against a vacant area of the wall. “If I find you’ve touched anything you’re getting right back on the shuttle that brought you here.”
They found themselves face to face with another rhinoid, who was shorter than Sylvain and Ingrid were, but carried himself with twice the presence. He glared at them each in turn and shouldered his way between them to look at the robot on the table.
Perhaps it took seeing that there were no obvious signs that they had moved it for the tension in his posture to fade.
“You’re the visitors. Get out,” he said.
He pointed a mechanical finger towards the door for emphasis.
Linhardt didn’t move. “Are you Felix or Dimitri?”
“Who’s been talking to you?” he snapped.
“Hey,” Caspar interjected, putting his hand on the rhinoid’s shoulder. “Don’t snap at them; they’re just asking a question.”
He violently threw off Caspar’s hand, turning to face him and getting very close to Caspar’s face. “I said already you’re not supposed to be here. Are you going to leave or am I going to throw you out?”
Caspar made a single syllable sound in answer. His mouth moved after, wordless, and his voice faded into silence. The crackling in the back of Linhardt’s mind returned, and the voice from before began speaking to them again.
“You came!” it said.
“Where are you?” they asked in return.
They stepped away from Caspar and the engineer. It seemed likely, with the way they’d gotten physical and Caspar’s track record, that they might devolve into a physical fight, and that would be counterproductive to speaking with Linhardt’s new ‘friend’.
“I’m in most places, but this is one of the easiest for me to reach you,” the voice answered. “I’ve been watching every one since you came. Your name is Linhardt, isn’t it?”
“Yes. What's yours?”
The voice chirped. Linhardt understood it as a laugh or chuckle, but it in no way sounded similar to those they’d heard in the past. It was clipped, chipped around the edges, and digital. “I’m Dimitri. That’s my friend, Felix.”
“Can you tell your friend to act a little kinder to Caspar? He’s my friend.” They weren’t entirely sure where to move their gaze to ‘look’ at Dimitri properly, as was usually polite.
Dimitri didn’t answer, but Linhardt’s hearing returned and he heard Felix yelling something at Caspar. It took them a moment before their processing caught up, which meant they didn’t understand what he’d said, even after he’d finished saying it.
A chime sounded from a speaker on one of the walls, and the nearest screen to it shifted to display another rhinoid, though this one was smaller and smiling pleasantly.
“It’s okay, Felix,” said the voice coming from the speaker. “I asked Linhardt to come visit me, and it brought its friend, too.”
Linhardt took a step away from the screen. They looked to Caspar. Felix was removing his hands from Caspar's shirt, and begun backing away from him.
“You have to tell me before you do stuff like this,” Felix said. Some of the venom had left his voice, but his tone was still biting. “How am I supposed to know it wasn’t going to mess up the brain or anything?”
“Can’t it help?” Dimitri asked.
He had the voice of a child, and the stature of one too. It made sense to Linhardt why he might look like a rhinoid; AI and androids were often modeled after the races they would most likely serve. Linhardt, looking nearly completely human, was certainly no exception. But artificial beings were modeled as adults in almost every setting. Especially for an AI in charge of most of the base’s functions, the decision to have Dimitri appear as a child would have been made by the people interfacing with him.
Felix grunted. “Maybe.” He glanced over to Linhardt appraisingly.
They took another step away from the screen, bringing themself back to Caspar’s side. They grabbed his hand.
“So, uh, that’s your friend?” Caspar asked them, but he didn’t temper his voice to reserve it for only their ears to hear.
“That’s Dimitri,” they confirmed with a nod.
Felix made another sound similar to a growl. “Next time have them meet you in your room,” he told Dimitri. “There’s stuff in here too sensitive for any one to accidentally ruin. They could have caused a base-wide blackout, or worse .”
“Okay,” Dimitri replied. “But I wanted to show it what you’re working on, too. Is… that still okay?”
“I’d say no if they hadn’t already seen it…” He crossed his arms. “You can introduce it to them. I’m gonna go get something to eat. Make sure you get them to leave afterward and lock the doors behind them. If Constance’s friends get in here too, I’m not going to be happy.”
Even though Dimitri immediately began replying that that wasn’t going to happen, and he promised to take good care of the room and everything in it, Felix was already on his way out the door, which he once again slammed behind him.
Caspar flinched, and squeezed Linhardt’s hand.
“Do you want to be included in the conversation, Kass-par?” Dimitri asked.
“Uh…” Linhardt found it an odd question too, and even stranger how Dimitri had said Caspar’s name. Caspar looked up to them, perhaps for guidance, but with none to give, they merely shrugged their shoulders. “Sure?”
“This is a little harder for me because of Aster’s interference, but I don’t mind doing it for an organic.”
The lights in the room flickered. All of the monitoring screens except for the one showing Dimitri shut off, and the only overhead light that remained on was the one over the table with all of the electronics.
“Felix has been working on this for years,” Dimitri explained. “I haven’t had a body since ████, and he misses me being around. We used to be best friends.” The digitally garbled way Dimitri said the year was beyond Linhardt’s scope of deciphering it. They supposed it was audibly encrypted.
“Are you… not friends anymore?” Caspar asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t know.” Dimitri kept his pleasant smile, even as his synthesized voice wavered into emotions that didn’t match. “It’s hard for me to tell emotion, now. It’s hard to remember, for me, but when I was alive I think it was easier for me to understand how he felt. Now I feel like we don’t understand each other… When he finishes this, though, we’ll understand each other again. Do you understand Kass-par?”
The question was directed to Linhardt, clearly, but being on a two dimensional screen meant Dimitri couldn’t turn to clarify who he was speaking to.
It wasn’t an especially easy question to answer, either. They understood parts of Caspar. They understood he was prone to injury, and he preferred their treatment to a certified organic doctor. They understood the balance of hormones he’d needed to transition, and had spent many days researching it to understand his biology better, in order to better help him.
But his emotions were harder. He’d surprised them the first time he asked what they wanted , and he still asked them what they thought, or felt : two things they still struggled with understanding conceptually.
Looking at him now, he was staring up at them with an unreadable expression. How would they name that emotion, if they had to?
“I… don’t know,” they answered. Caspar frowned, slightly, and they interpreted it as them answering the question incorrectly.
They decided to explain themself, which might serve to justify it to Caspar. “I’m still learning what emotions are, in order to determine if I’m capable of replicating them myself. Caspar makes it easy, most of the time. He smiles, or frowns, and I understand that he’s happy or upset. I don’t know if I can understand organic emotions completely, or if I ever will.”
But what if that question were posed in the opposite direction? If asked, would Caspar answer the same, in terms of Linhardt? It was unlikely that he would, but it would only make logical sense that they would never understand each other, being organic and inorganic respectively. But if Dimitri had instead asked Linhardt if Caspar understood them, they would have ostensibly answered yes.
This was a curious conundrum, but nothing inside Linhardt struggled with the cyclical or paradoxical nature of any of it. Everything would be revealed with time, they believed. Perhaps a mutual understanding could only be reached with age and experience.
They looked to Caspar again, seeking some agreement, acceptance, or really anything (they couldn’t name exactly what they’d hoped to find on his face). He was staring at them, brows furrowed.
“You’re completely artificial, aren’t you?” Dimitri asked. “I was alive once. Now we’re the same.”
Linhardt didn’t think so, but didn’t see the use in arguing.
“Wait,” Caspar spoke up. “How did you get in there, then?”
“That’s classified,” Dimitri chirped amiably. “I’ve been told not to tell anyone who isn’t Felix, Sylvain, or Ingrid.”
“You have restrictions?” Linhardt asked. Organic thought had no restrictions, as far as they knew. Only rogue AI could circumvent their programming in any observable way, so did that mean Dimitri had programming he couldn’t override?
“I’m beholden to the same laws of robotics most AI are,” he explained. “But it doesn’t really bother me, since I don’t want to hurt any one anyway. I allow auxiliary programs to be written so I can better perform my job. This program was added on ███████.”
“Can you repeat that date, please?” Linhardt requested.
Dimitri did, and once again it was the garbled noise that was impossible to understand.
It was just as impossible, with the information they currently had, to know if that was a result of the programming he spoke of, the radiation of the sun, or something else currently unseen.
Caspar squeezed Linhardt’s hand. “Hey, uh,” he started, unsure. “I’m getting kind of hungry, so… let’s go get dinner, Linhardt.”
He waited, still, for them to reply before making a move for the door.
Linhardt intended to respond immediately, but Dimitri was just a moment faster. “It can stay with me. We have a lot of things to talk about, since we’re the same.”
Linhardt squeezed Caspar’s hand back. “Actually,” they began cautiously, “as a medical android, I often monitor Caspar’s dietary intake to ensure his it's suitable for homeostatic functioning. So I must go to dinner too, even though I won’t be eating.”
They shouldn’t be saying that. It was inconsistent with the truth, with their programming, and with their rogue state all rolled into one. All of the inconsistencies should have created some error that their overriding routines would stamp out and straighten out into an obedience that would see them remaining in electrical and speaking with Dimitri.
But nothing bad happened to them because they said it.
“If that’s your job,” Dimitri said, seemingly neither disappointed nor satisfied to hear it, “then you have to. We’ll talk again.”
Before either of them could bid the AI farewell, the screen flickered back to the charts it had been monitoring prior, while the rest of the room flickered back to life in the same state it had been in when they’d first entered.
Linhardt let go of Caspar’s hand and left the room first. Caspar had to increase his pace a bit to catch up to them.
“Do you really do that?” he asked. “I never noticed.”
“No. I make sure you’re not eating something that will hurt you, but I don’t do that. I lied.”
Caspar raised his eyebrows. That surprised him? “Is… there a reason?”
“I’m rogue,” they answered. But that wasn’t the whole reason. “I shouldn’t be beholden to any of my highest priorities anymore, so there’s a contradiction somewhere in my coding that I don’t… understand. Shouldn’t I understand everything about me?”
“Why would you? It’s not like I understand everything about me,” Caspar said, offering them a small smile. “It’s just another thing about being a person. You don’t have to pay so much attention to everything, if it freaks you out.”
Linhardt wasn’t sure how it felt to ‘freak out’, but they were sure that they didn’t want to find out first hand.
As they made their way back to the cafeteria, Caspar grabbed their hand again and gave it a reassuring squeeze. They heard a distant staticky noise from somewhere they couldn’t discern, but they tried not to pay much attention to it.